Published by Jerome was born Eusebius Hieronymus, in a small town called Stridon on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia to a rich Christian family in the year 331 AD, and lived until 420 AD. He is known both as a Father of the church and Doctor of the church. At home, his parents made sure that he was well educated, and later sent him to Rome so that he could improve his intellectual interests. While in Rome, he studied under the famous pagan grammarian Donatus and a Christian rhetorician, Victorinus. Also, aside from furthering the knowledge of his own language, he became fluent in other languages such as Latin and Greek. When Jerome was nineteen years old, Pope Liberius baptized him. Shortly after that he traveled to Gaul and Italy with some friends who shared his interests. Around the year 373 AD, he traveled to Antioch where he continued studying humanism and monasticism. It was during this time that he had a spiritual experience during a dream where he was accused of being a Ciceronian, and not a Christian. In this dream, God scolded him for his pagan studies, and this event caused him to devote himself entirely to the bible and theology as a monk, although it was suggested that this declaration was not perfectly pursued. In the desert of Chalcis, he continued to study and even learned Hebrew. On the way back to Antioch, he was admitted to the priesthood. In Constantinople, he met Gregory of Nazianzus, who influenced Jerome greatly. When Jerome returned to Rome, Pope Damasus I appointed him confidential secretary and librarian and had him to begin his work of translating the Bible into Latin. After Damasus died, he joined a monastery in Bethlehem and stayed there until he died. These events and even more led him to be known as The Doctor of The Church and Patron of Librarians. St. Jerome’s feast day is September 30th. Saint Jerome died in 420 AD, and his relics can be found at the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.
During the lifetime of Saint Jerome, a few major events took place that may have influenced his life. Before Saint Jerome was born, Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan, declaring that all religious studies were acceptable including Christianity. This event made the Roman Empire become officially Catholic in the year 380 AD, supporting the beliefs of Saint Jerome and expanding the limits of Christian existence. In the year 337 AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great died, a man that could have influenced Jerome greatly in his religious experiences. After Constantine’s death, his three sons fought amongst themselves to take over the throne. These fights lasted until 350 AD and may have brought hardships to Jerome as he experienced the fighting around him. This event may have supported his decision to try and bring some calmness and peace to the planet while following God’s path to righteousness. Rome had a war with Persia in 359 AD and a year later, the Visigoths were converted to Christianity, increasing the religion’s population and expanding the faith.
Saint Jerome was born in Europe in a small town called Stridon. He worked in Stridon but also worked in other places such as Antioch, Trier, Bethlehem, and in Rome as a librarian and a secretary to Pope Damasus I. In these places he was surrounded by people who were both pagan and Catholic, but the Catholic religious senses pulled him to believe that there was a greater force out side of the ordinary, and Pope Damasus, Pope Liberious and many other religious men and women who lived in those places tightened Jerome’s bond with the Catholic religion., thus inspiring him to spread the faith by means of biblical translations.
Jerome had a very large impact on the Church because he spent a good portion of his life translating the Bible from Hebrew and Greek to Latin. He and one of his female students also established a number of monasteries in Bethlehem. His Latin translation of the Bible is known as the Vulgate because it is in the language of the common people. He also taught the Bible to women.
He translated the Bible into Latin because Pope Damasus asked him to. He established monasteries because they provided refuge for people who left their homes while Italy was under attack. Hey enjoyed teaching the Bible to women because their wisdom and depth of understanding was very helpful to him in his struggle to make sense of the Scriptures.
Saint Jerome was able to translate the Bible because he was very good with languages and was one of the few people in the west who knew Hebrew and Greek. Because the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, Jerome was very important in the translating of it into Latin since not many others knew those languages as well as he did.
Several of his philosophies were extremely unsuccessful and he later ended up feeling ashamed for even writing them. His monasteries, however, were a great success during his lifetime. He set them up to help those who fled Italy while it was under attack, and it definitely helped in giving them shelter while they could not stay at home.
Jerome did impact the Church quite a bit during his lifetime, as well as after he died. The translation of the Bible into Latin created a large controversy in the Church during his lifetime. The officials of the Church were not happy about the Bible being translated because they felt it should be kept in its original languages of Hebrew and Greek. By translating the Bible, Jerome made it easier for the common people to read and understand Scripture. This also upset the Church because they felt they were losing their control. This especially caused an issue with the invention of the printing press. Once the translated Latin Bible was able to be purchased and read by anyone, Church officials were furious. They felt that they had ultimate control over the Church when the only way people knew Scripture was how it was read to them by the Church officials. In this way, officials could tell people what Scripture said the way they saw it, as opposed to how it was actually written. When people could start reading Scripture for themselves and no longer had to rely on it being read to them, this took away a great amount of the Church’s power over the common people.
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